How do you give a team a competitive edge?

Get them to build a train in a day, is a good way to start. 

We gave 28 employees of a multinational conglomerate company a day to build a timber train, complete with carriages for planting and socialising, at a community garden on the outskirts of Mumbai. 

The participants were on CEDEP’s ‘Active Edge’ leadership programme, designed to give professionals an ‘edge’ in business, and their Splash Project was part of their first module, with the aim of uniting the colleagues over a common cause. 

Splash Projects equip participants with many skills. One of which is agility and resilience in the face of VUCA challenges. We had our own VUCA challenge one week before the project when we found ourselves without a charity partner.  

With seven days to go, from 7,000-miles away, we had to find a new charity, which meant finding a new site, prompting a partial project redesign and the re-sourcing of materials.  

Thanks to a local man, who we’d met on a previous project, we found Ekta Gardens. The garden provides social and educational development activities for children and their families living in the nearby slums. 

Colin Robertson, Splash Projects’ Project Manager, said:

“These guys are really good at what they do in their day jobs, but this project was designed to take them completely out of their comfort zones. We handed it all over to them at the planning exercise the evening before, where, suited and booted, they had as many questions as they had answers. They had to make the plans a reality the next day. 

“Ekta Gardens is a really important part of this community, and it was clear at the end of the day when the ribbon was cut, that the team genuinely understood the difference their hard work was going to have.  

“The project really knitted them together as a group, so it was mission accomplished.”